A DIFFERENT FINAL FRONTIER

A PRIZE-WINNING TALE OF TWO MEN FINDING LOVE IN THE BLOODY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN WILD WEST

WORDS: ULI LENART

BOOKS

BOOK OF THE MONTH

DAYS WITHOUT END

Sebastian Barry/Faber & Faber

→ Inspired by his son coming out as gay, Sebastian Barry’s story about two soldiers in love in gritty frontier America recently made him the first novelist to win the Costa Book Award twice. Thomas McNulty, a teenager who escapes the Irish famine for America, and his lover John Cole, are hired to fight the brutal battles with Native Americans and then in the Civil War. Thanks to Barry’s incredible writing, you completely enter into the mindset of the young soldiers, feel their camaraderie and apprehension, and see the vast haunting beauty of pioneer America through their eyes. Thomas and John also find themselves working as entertainers in a saloon, dressing as women to comfort miners starved of female company, and go on to establish a family with a young Sioux girl as their adopted child. The first-person narrative, written in a confusion of tenses like lines of broken poetry, creates an authentic voice through which the characters rationalise the extraordinary events happening to them. Barry captures the slaughter and starvation, bloodshed and recrimination as well as the moments of tenderness. Freshly out in paperback, you’ll want to read this novel over and over again, and you’ll find something new to savour each time. Out now